It is necessary to measure an exact velocity of a moving object in order to appropriately control the moving object. There is a velocity measuring apparatus, as a moving object velocity measuring apparatus, which acquires a rotation amount of wheels and calculates a velocity based on a shifting distance calculated from the rotation amount.
However, the apparatus can be used only for a moving object provided with wheels. In addition, even if there is a moving object provided with wheels, in some cases, an exact velocity cannot be measured due to an effect of wheels slipping. A velocity measuring apparatus that calculates a velocity by continuously imaging the around or the like with a digital camera and acquiring a pixel shift amount within the captured image is known.
For instance, a velocity measuring apparatus according to claim 1 of Japanese Patent No. 5304064 (PTL 1) “includes: imaging means that has an imaging element provided with a plurality of pixels; position information detecting means for detecting image information positions that are positions of captured pixels, which are a plurality of pieces of image information imaged by the imaging element, on the imaging element; imaging range calculating means for calculating, for each of the pixels, a range which is captured by the pixels and of which a size differs depending on a distance from the imaging means in a moving direction as an imaging range; shifting distance calculating means for calculating, for each piece of the imaging information, a maximum shifting distance L1 and a minimum shifting distance L2 of the image information based on sizes of a plurality of the imaging ranges corresponding to each of the plurality of pixels and the image information position before and after a predetermined period of time detected by the position information detecting means; and velocity information calculating means for calculating a maximum shifting velocity V1 from the maximum shifting distance L1 and a minimum shifting velocity V2 from the minimum shifting distance L2 for each of the plurality of pieces of image information, for calculating a minimum value V1min out of a plurality of maximum shifting velocities V1 calculated from the plurality of pieces of image information and a maximum value V2max out of a plurality of the minimum shifting velocities V2 calculated from the plurality of pieces of image information, and for calculating velocity information based on the calculated minimum value V1min and maximum value V2max”.